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Friday, December 31, 2010

Many people know about the Coney Island of hot dogs, roller coasters, circuses, and side shows; what many do not know is the other Coney Island, the much forgotten Coney Island of strange immersive amusements produced on a scale nearly impossible to imagine today and blurring the boundaries between science and spectacle, current affairs and entertainment, and education and titillation.

Just to give you a sense of what I'm talking about. On an average day in Coney Island from the years 1890 to 1915, a visitor could (and this is just a tiny sampling):

take in a Midget City Theater vaudeville show in Lilliputia, the town populated by 300 midgets and modeled on a half-scale 16th century Nuremberg (top image)

check out a staged tenement fire featuring a cast of 2,000 at the popular attraction Fighting the Flames (2nd image)

marvel at freakishly tiny premature babies kept alive by a novel technology (later adopted by hospitals) and team of nurses at The Infant Incubator (5th image)

encounter a troupe of genuine head-hunting Bontac tribesmen in an authentically replicated village (6th image)

be publicly humiliated at The Insanitarium and Blowhole Theater, where a midget in a clown costume (sic) would herd you with an electric cattle prod (sic again) over jets of air that would blow up your skirts (if you were of the female persuasion) before an audience of laughing park patrons (see video above, about 20 seconds in)

"The Great Coney Island Spectacularium"--my upcoming project as artist-in-residence at the Coney Island Museum--will be a response, commemoration, celebration, and evocative re-staging of fin de siècle Coney Island as the pinnacle of this bizarre world of pre-cinematic immersive spectacular amusement. It will feature a specially constructed immersive cosmorama, a dime-museum inspired installation, and a number of other spectacular surprises.

The exhibition--produced in tandem with Coney Island Museum director Aaron Beebe--will launch on Friday, April 8th, 2011 at the Coney Island Museum. There will be many spectacular events over the course of its year-long residency, and the whole will launch with The Congress of Curious People, a 10-day set of lectures, performances, and panel discussions about curiosity and curiosities, broadly conceived (more on that soon; more on last year's Congress here).

You can visit the website for the exhibition--which features an acitvely updated blog tracing the exhibition research conducted by Aaron and myself, a bibliography, and many more details about the exhibition--at www.spectacularium.org. Please sign up for the mailing list (upper right hand corner of the website) to be alerted to events and announcements around the exhibition.

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Near NYC? Collect anything unique or out of the ordinary? Want to be on the next episode of "Oddities?" Email your info to odditiesshow@gmail.com!!!! The producers will be in touch!

This call for collectors just in from the production crew of "Oddities," the new Discovery and Science Channel series based on Obscura Antiques and Oddities in New York City. If you are a collector of unusual things and interested in appearing on the show--or would like additional information--email odditiesshow@gmail.com.

You can find out more about the show at this recent post and on the official website by clicking here.

Parisian museums are getting more and more historically innovative with their programming. First, the amazing looking "Science and Curiosities: exhibition at Versailles (as discussed in this recent post). And now this just in: The CinémathèqueFrançaise will be co-producing a phantasmagoria projection & spectacle in partnership with--and to be performed at--The Louvre!

Phantasmagoria, invented in the wake of--and said to be a response to--The French Revolution, are essentially ghost shows in which images of skeletons, demons, and ghosts (see top image) are projected via a modified magic lantern and, through a series of ingenious special effects, seem to move about, approach and retreat from, the viewer. These forms of spectacle were very popular around the time of the French Revolution and were also performed throughout the 19th Century; with the advent of film, they metamorphosed into the horror movie, a popular form to this day.

The phantasmagoria projection & spectacle at the Louvre will consist of a series of phantasmagoria projections and spectacles between the dates of January 13th until March 28th of 2011; The highlight will be a grand phantasmagoria projection on March 6 where guest Phantasmagores Laure Parchomenko & Laurent Mannoni promise to conjure-up a variety of spirits which haunted the aftermath of the Revolution at 14:30 & 18:00.

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

A nice appreciation of the cabinet of curiosity approach to contemporary museum curation in today's Wall Street Journal:

At the [Royal Ontario Museum, aka ROM ], objects taken from its separate collections (fine and decorative arts, history, textiles, archaeology, geology, mineralogy, paleontology and zoology) are often mixed and matched in highly interdisciplinary displays to create a narrative not often seen in the more specialized museums that we are used to. For example, English dresses and slippers from the late 18th and early 19th centuries are displayed next to African and Asian clothing of the same era, alongside printing blocks and a wall-text description of berries used to produce dyes, because one of the points being made is how colors and patterns were dyed or printed onto these fabrics. Comparisons are being drawn about widely divergent cultures and industrial practices.

"In so many museums, curators are telling the story of the objects on display—why this is in the collection, why that is an important piece—while we're trying to use the objects in our collections to tell a story about how people go about their lives here and elsewhere around the world, and often about the intersection of the natural and cultural worlds," she said.Here's another example: A display contains ceramic vases, silver, clocks, weathervanes and furniture from the 18th century, across from painted portraits of men, women and children who lived in Canada back then. None of the individual objects have their own labels, and only some wall text describes life in that time. Who were those people in the portraits? Who painted them? Where were those chairs and vases made? Did those people own that silver? Presumably, the curators know and aren't telling us. At the ROM, the point isn't so much the individual objects as creating a big-picture view of life at a certain time and place. "We encourage visitors to make connections in their own minds," Ms. Carding said...

The ROM is in some ways a throwback. Before people traveled so much or had such wide access to books and photographs (in short, an education), 18th- and 19th-century museums were cabinets of curiosities that provided a world of collected knowledge, a walk-in encyclopedia of objects both natural and man-made, practical and artistic. It is rare to find this type of institution anymore; museums now are more and more specialized...

Like the original cabinets of curiosities, there is a little something for everyone, but not so much as to bore people. Known as the "Stair of Wonders," the landings between floors have their own miniature displays—seashells or insects or battalions of metal toy soldiers—to perk up interest when it may be flagging. There's also a life-size, walk-through diorama of the St. Clair Cave in Jamaica, with its plaster-cast hanging bats, insects and stalagmites (based on ROM scientists' work at the site). "People here talk about their old favorites; so many people just love the bat cave," Ms. Carding said.

You can read the full article--from which the excerpt is drawn--by clicking here.

Sunday, December 26, 2010

Tomorrow--Monday, December 27th--the Morbid Anatomy Library (seen above) will be open to the public from 12 until 5 PM. So feel free to stop by for a perusal of the stacks and some time among the specimens.

The library is located at 543 Union Street at Nevins in Brooklyn New York. Enter by buzzing 1E at the blue door.

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Morbid Anatomy is pleased to announce "A: Head on B: Body: The Real Life Dr. Frankenstein," a lecture and screening exploring the notion of the "mad scientist" in fact and fiction, history and myth. The focal point of the presentation will be the real life mad scientist Dr. Robert White, a professor and pioneering neurosurgeon whose experiments with what he termed "full body transplants" pushed many troubling boundaries.

The event will feature a short documentary film about Dr, White by Jim Fields, director of the “End of the Century: the Story of the Ramones." Fields and Lewi will introduce the film–which features a series of interviews with Dr. White discussing his controversial experiments–with an illustrated lecture contextualizing the doctor’s work within the history of “mad scientists” past and present, fictional and actual; scientists whose hubris drove them to go rogue by tampering with things perhaps best left alone.

Full event description follows; hope very much to see you there!

A: Head on B: Body: The Real Life Dr. FrankensteinA screening and lecture with film-maker Jim Fields and Mike LewiDate: Friday, January 7thTime: 8:00 PMAdmission: $5Presented by Morbid Anatomy

In an eventful and successful career spanning 40 years, Dr. Robert White–pioneering neurosurgeon and Professor at Cleveland’s Case Western Reserve University–did many things. He participated in Nobel Prize-nominated work, published more than 700 scholarly articles, examined Vladimir Lenin’s preserved brain in Cold War Russia, founded Pope John Paul II’s Committee on Bioethics, went to mass daily, and raised 10 children. He also engaged in a series of horrifying and highly controversial experiments reminiscent of a B-Movie mad scientist, experiments which pushed the limits of medical ethics, infuriated the animal rights community, and questioned notions of identity, consciousness, and corporeality as well as mankind’s biblically-condoned dominion over the animal kingdom.

Tonight, join film-maker Jim Fields–best known for his 2003 documentary “End of the Century” about the legendary punk band The Ramones–and Mike Lewi for a screening of Fields’ short documentary about the life and work of this real-life Dr. Frankenstein whose chilling “full body transplants” truly seem the stuff of a B-Movie terror. Fields will introduce the film–which features a series of interviews with Dr. White discussing his controversial experiments–with an illustrated lecture contextualizing the doctor’s work within the history of “mad scientists” past and present, fictional and actual; scientists whose hubris drove them to go rogue by tampering with things perhaps best left alone.

Jim Fields made a few documentaries, one of which, “End of the Century: the Story of the Ramones” is particularly long. He’s currently a video journalist at Time Magazine and Time.com.

Mike Lewi is a filmmaker, event producer, and disc jockey.

You can find out more about this event on the Observatory website by clicking here and can can access the event on Facebook here. You can get directions to Observatory--which is next door to the Morbid Anatomy Library (more on that here)--by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here.

While we may never know what the ‘must have’ Christmas gift was in 1890, we do know that it most assuredly wasn’t Thomas Edison’s talking doll.

Using miniature phonographs embedded inside, these “talking” baby dolls were toy manufacturers’ first attempt at using sound technology in toys. They marked a collaboration between Edison and William Jacques and Lowell Briggs, who worked to miniaturize the phonograph starting in 1878.

Unfortunately, production delays, poor recording technology, high production costs, and damages during distribution all combined to create toys that were a complete disaster, terrifying children and costing their parents nearly a month’s pay.

Edison would later refer to the dolls as his “little monsters.”

To hear this wee monstrous baby reciting, we are led to believe, "Little Jack Horner," click here. To read the entire story from which the above excerpt is drawn, click here. Sound from Archive.org.

The Vast Santanic Conspiracy: Is St. Nick the Tool of a Plot too Monstrous to Mention?An illustrated lecture with cult author and cultural critic Mark Dery, followed by a Krampus/Solstice-themed after party with music, specialty cocktails, and moreDate: Tuesday, December 21 (Winter Solstice)Time: 8:00 PMAdmission: $10Presented by Morbid Anatomy

Canceled, last year, by an act of Cthulhu–the Mother of All Blizzards, which dumped 20 inches of snow across the Northeast–Dery’s wickedly witty lecture, “The Vast Santanic Conspiracy: Is St. Nick the Tool of a Plot too Monstrous to Mention?,” is sure to inspire Christmas jeer.

Few Americans know that Santa descends from the mock king who held court at Saturnalia, the Roman festival celebrating the winter solstice. Or that he shares cultural DNA with the Lord of Misrule who presided over the yuletide Feast of Fools in the Middle Ages—lewd, blasphemous revels that gave vent to underclass hostility toward feudal lords and the all-powerful church.

In “The Vast Santanic Conspiracy: Is St. Nick the Tool of a Plot too Monstrous to Mention?,” Dery, a cultural critic and book author, takes a look at the Jolly Old Elf’s little-known role as poster boy for officially sanctioned eruptions of social chaos, as well as his current status as a flashpoint in “the Christmas Wars”—cultural battles between evangelicals, atheists, conservatives, and anti-consumerists over the “true” meaning of Christmas. Along the way, Dery considers New Age theories that Santa is a repressed memory of an ancient Celtic cult revolving around red-capped psychedelic mushrooms; Nazi attempts to re-imagine Christmas—a holiday consecrated to a Jewish baby, for Christ’s sake—as a pre-Christian invention of tree-worshipping German tribes, in some misty, Wagnerian past; and the suspicious similarities between Satan and Santa, connections that have fueled a cottage industry of conspiracy theories on the religious right.

You can find out more about this event on the Observatory website by clicking here. You can get directions to Observatory--which is next door to the Morbid Anatomy Library (more on that here)--by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here.

The artist Paul Rumsey--who you may remember from this recent post--just sent along a wonderful new work (see above) based on a circa 1856 dream of the symbolist poet Charles Baudelaire.

The artwork is entitled "Baudelaires Dream;" Rumsey's descriptions of the work, and the dream, follow:

Baudelaire wrote a letter to a friend telling him about his dream. He dreams that he goes to a brothel, which is like a gallery, and finds that part of it is a medical museum. There are pictures on the wall of fetuses that the women in the brothel have given birth to. One fetus is alive and has lived there for years, it spends all day sitting on a plinth, as part of the medical exhibition. It has a rubbery appendage growing from the top of its head which it has wrapped around its body. Baudelaire has a conversation with it, then wakes up and finds that he was sleeping in the same position as the creature on its plinth.

"Baudelaires Dream" is now on view in a solo show of Rumsey's work at the Galerie Beatrice Soulie in Paris until January 15th, stumbling distance from the incredible MuséeDupuytren. You can find out more about the exhibition by clicking here. Click on the image to see much larger, finer, and more detailed image.

You can read the original dream in French by clicking here. A translation of the dream can be found here.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

On a very quick jaunt to London from which I have only just returned, I was very, very fortunate (thank you so much, Mr. Pat Morris!) to have had the opportunity to visit the now fully-installed Museum of Everything Exhibition #3, which I only had seen in its half-ready state a few days before exhibition opening a few months back.

All I have to say is: WOW.

The Museum of Everything #3--curated by the British pop and ruralist artist Sir Peter Blake, perhaps best remembered for his design of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album--is truly a wonder. This immersive spectacle of an exhibition celebrates popular art in the broadest of senses, both in content and in installation, and uses as its departure point Blake's own formidable private collection of such works supplemented by artifacts and artworks drawn from a variety of other privately held collections.

The installation of the exhibition is delightful, fun-house-inspired and immersive, with dark hallways, rickety stairs, and surprising turns leading you into rooms devoted in turn to--among other things--pitch cards and souvenir photos of fun-fair freaks, Victorian circus banners, marionette collections, Punch and Judy sets, Victorian anthropomorphic taxidermy, shell work pieces and a reconstructed shell grotto, Victorian découpage and other paper craft, and musical toys that go off in unison every half hour or so, filling the entire space with a beautiful circus-music cacophony. Each room has a feeling all its own, with a style of installation particularly and artfully suited to the artifacts within.

Mr. Blake's own collection provides the framework for the exhibition--as the casually-narrated exhibition labels, often in Blake's own unaffected voice make clear--but of equal if not greater importance are supplementary collections drawn from a broad variety of other passionate private collectors. Some of the most impressive effects of the exhibition come from the ingenious curation of artifacts drawn from a large number of private collectors into a single assemblage, such as my favorite, the magnificent homage to Walter Potter's Museum of Curiosities. This installation not only re-unites for the first time many of Potter's famously over-the-top taxidermalogical tableaux with wall-art, photographs and other ephemera from his recently disbanded collection, but also contextualizes his work within the broader theme of Victorian taxidermy, anthropomorphic and otherwise, with lavish Victorian bird jars, depictions of boxing squirrels (a popular Victorian taxidermy trope, I am told) and a variety of "straight" taxidermy pieces as well.

The whole of this literally fantastic exhibition is held together by the exuberance and inventiveness of the installation--never art-world and never boring, labyrinthian in structure and bristling with work floor to ceiling--and by the homespun exhibition labels narrating the exhibition in the informal voice of Blake and some of the other collectors and artists. Through the sum of its parts, the exhibition serves also as a reminder of what pop art meant before it became just another art-world term and white-room enshrined product: a celebration of the "homely arts," the arts of the people and of everyday life, of the fairground and the parlor. It is also a reminder that art can be fun, appeal to the senses, not be in a white room, and still make you think.

If you CAN see this exhibition before its December 24th closing, I simply cannot recommend it highly enough. Intriguing, brilliant, thought-provoking, and a lot of fun.

The Museum of Everything is located at the corner of Regents Park Rd and Sharples Hall St, NW1 8YL. For more information, visit the exhibition website by clicking here.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

RETROFUTUROLOGYHow the Past Saw the Present // How the Present Sees the Future

A group show of visual art at Observatory, Brooklyn, curated by the Hollow Earth Society, Ethan Gould & Wythe Marschall, Founding Colonels

The imagination (as a productive faculty of cognition) is a powerful agent for creating, as it were,a second nature out of the material supplied to it by actual nature. —Kant

To have an imagined future, you must simultaneously have an imagined present and an imagined past.

A DeLorean decked out in flashing lights and complicated-looking wires: It's a modest-budget promise that, yes, the technologies of our age—our new computer chips and LED lights and cars with doors that open upright like a space pod—can puncture the time barrier, with the right old-fashioned mad scientist at the steering wheel! Where to go? A rowdy 1950s, wherein a white kid can invent rock and roll? A steampunk 1800s? A future wherein the promises of kaleidoscopic, holographic advertising from the late 1980s come to fruition—a world with yet another layer of retrofuturist dreaming added onto the small-town diner...?

Our visions of the future are nested.

Our conception of time is hyperreal. In explaining the visual gimmicks of a single cultural artifact such as the Buggles's "Video Killed The Radio Star," we must refer to the heyday of radio; the future promised by television executives in synthesizer advertisements; science fiction pulp covers from the 1950s; the neon-on-black-and-white aesthetic of MTV in its early years, not to mention the gallery scene that birthed that aesthetic; 1950s diner-decor futurism; the late-1970s body-posturing and dystopic styling of Devo; Fritz Lang's Metropolis, looking forward to 2026; the garb of mad scientists in movies from the 1940s;—and the sigh that comes with opening a magazine and seeing all of this, compressed down into an ad for sunglasses for hipsters.

Or not even for hipsters: The retrocamp fashion exemplified by an irritating blend of past and future has been recompressed and sold in shopping malls internationally. This isn't marginal pulp—

This is the process on which the present runs.

You are invited to join us for a group show

The Hollow Earth Society seeks artists working in drawing, printmaking, and painting, and possibly sculpture and video/multimedia art (space is limited) for RETROFUTUROLOGY, a group show focused on past- and present-futures, to be up from January 29 to March 5, 2011, at Observatory (observatoryroom.org). Submissions are due January 8, 2011.

How to submit:Include all information listed below. Late or incomplete submissions will not be considered unless they are mind-staggeringly fantastic and presented with great humility.

Send us up to five images. Digital submissions will be accepted via email. Files must be in JPEG or PDF format. Please number your image files to correspond to your image list.

Send an image list. Double check that the numbers on your list correspond to the numbers in the names of your actual files. In your list, include for each image: an image number, the work's title, the date of work, the medium, and its size and price.Along with the list, please include a brief description of each image.Send a three-line bio, your contact information and an email address. You may also submit a résumé.

If you like, send an optional artist’s statement, no longer than 300 words.

THERE IS NO FEE TO ENTER.

Deadline: All email submissions must be received no later than January 8, 2011. (All accepted work should be physically received at Observatory no later than January 24, 2011.)

Return of submitted materials: Include a SASE and make sure there is sufficient postage, or pay for shipping and we will ship your work back to you. If work is two-dimensional, the Hollow Earth Society is more than happy to have it on file for future shows and keep it exhibited for sale on our website. The same 30% commission for art sold will apply.

Drop-Off: If you have been accepted into the show and are in the NYC area, you may wish to drop off your art at the gallery. Email us (gallery@hollowearthsociety.com) to schedule a date and time.

Pick-Up: Return of mailed artwork with return postage will begin on March 12, 2011.

Monday, December 13, 2010

This year, in the interest in offering an alternative to the general horrors that constitute The Holiday Season, The Morbid Anatomy Library is teaming up with our sister spaces Observatory and Proteus Gowanus for an epic, music-accompanied, beverage-enhanced day-long holiday shopping party this Sunday, December 19th, from 12-6 PM.

To the strains of the music of DJ Richard Faulk and with delicious seasonal drink in hand, we invite you to wander the labyrinthian spaces of Proteus Gowanus and its offshoots which will, for this day only, be filled with an amazing array of objects for sale, including (but not limited to): unusual and obscure books, one of a kind taxidermied and outfitted anthropomorphic mice (see above), crocheted skulls, reflective vests for uninsured bikers, miniature library furniture made from library catalogue cards, limited edition photographic prints from The Secret Museum, Private Cabinets, and Anatomical Theatre, and much, much more.

And on the note of "much, much more": The Morbid Anatomy Library continues to actively seek additional merchandise to include in the sale. If you are a maker, artist, author, publisher, taxidermist or collector interested in consigning objects/artifacts/artworks/books/specimens etc. for this event, please contact me at morbidanatomy@gmail.com.

Full directions follow. Hope very, very much to see you there!

Proteus Gowanus, is located at 543 Union Street (between Nevins and Bond) in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. Entrance to the gallery is off Nevins Street: enter through the large black gates, walk down the alleyway to the end, second door on the left. Look for the golden arm above the gallery door.

Subway

R or M train to Union Street in Brooklyn:Walk two long blocks on Union (towards the Gowanus Canal) to Nevins Street. 543 Union Street is the large red brick building on right. Go right on Nevins and left down alley through large black gates. Gallery is the second door on the left.

F or G train to Carroll Street:Walk one block to Union. Turn right, walk two long blocks on Union towards the Gowanus Canal, cross the bridge, take left on Nevins, go down the alley to the second door on the left.

Driving from Manhattan.(There is usually easy parking on weekends.)

Continue straight off Brooklyn Bridge to Atlantic Avenue, take left on Atlantic. Go four blocks to Nevins St and take a right. Follow Nevins several blocks til you come to Sackett. Park on the next block (just before Union) and go down the alley off Nevins through the large black gates, second door on the left.

Anatomical University Museums are the keepers of collections which often are very old and different for their consistence and typology. These museums have a fundamental role for the preservation and valorization of cultural historical‐scientific heritage, therefore must become a place of interdisciplinary synthesis. They represent the progress of studies in the past and for the future, and play their fundamental role for the research and for the promotion of educational activities. This role will allow them to be a service for University students and professors, and to spread scientific knowledge to different audiences. Developing the capacity of museums to work in a network is necessary for them to become centres for the production of knowledge, activities and services.

Speakers include a number of directors and curators from Italian university anatomical museums together with the directors of the Josephinum of Vienna and the Museum of Medical University of Danzig:

Giovanni Mazzotti, University of Bologna: Visiting an Anatomical Museum: curiosity or training?

Sonia Horn, University of Wien: The growth of collections for the permanence of an historical Anatomical Museum. The case of the Josephinum in Vienna.

Roberto Toni, University of Parma: The Anatomical Museum as a research source in the field of

biomedical robotics: the Tenchini project at the University of Parma

Alessandro Ruggeri, Nicolò Nicoli Aldini, Stefano Durante, Vittorio Delfino Pesce, University of Bologna: The visit of the Anatomical Waxes Museum “Luigi Cattaneo” center of in-depth research of the Bolognese medical tradition of XIXth century and of training for modern education

Ugo Pastorino, National Tumour Institute, Milan: The project for a virtual archive of human body images

Carla Garbarino, University of Pavia: The anatomical collections of the Museum for the history of the University

Marek Bukowski, University of Gdansk: An Anatomical collection and Museum of Medical University

Berenice Cavarra, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia: Medicine and the study of the living being in XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries

Vincenzo Esposito, Second University of Neaples: Anatomical Museums between past historical identity and present cultural crossbreeding

Marina Cimino, University of Padua: The birth in a museum or the birth of a museum: the obstetric collection in Padua

If I was in Italy, I would SO be there.... If any Morbid Anatomy readers live near Modena Italy and would like to make attend and write a report about your experience, you can email me at morbidanatomy@gmail.com.

Click here to see original post on the Biomedicine on Display website; More on the image--captioned Plakat für ein anatomisches Museum, Hamburg, 1913--at this recent post; click on image to see much larger image.

Thursday, December 9, 2010

We at Morbid Anatomy are very very excited about tonight's viewing party for our new favorite television series, "Oddities," which you might recall from this flurry of recent posts (1, 2, 3).

The "Oddities” Marathon and Party event--which will take place tonight at Observatory--will feature a four-episode marathon of the program, special drinks, a DJed after party, and prizes and giveaways, including an early brass "lucky skull" Mexican ring from "Oddities" cast member and Against Nature proprietor Ryan Matthew, a variety of 3D anatomical puzzles generously donated by Kikkerland, and, of course, Obscura Tshirts. The "cast" of "Oddities" will also be on hand for questions and comments.

You can see some clips (recommended!) and find out more about "Oddities" by clicking here.

Full details follow. Very much hope to see you there!

"Oddities” Marathon and PartyA four-episode marathon of the new television series Oddities, with give-aways, special drinks, surprise guests, and after partyDate: TONIGHT! Thursday, December 9Time: 8:00Admission: $5Presented by Morbid Anatomy

On Thursday, December 9, you are cordially invited to join Morbid Anatomy and Observatory as we celebrate the new television series based on our favorite purveyor of curious and amazing artifacts, Obscura Antiques and Oddities in New York City’s East village.

The evenings festivities will include–as a special treat for those of us without cable–a screening of the first three episodes of Oddities, which will reveal, to the discerning eye, an assortment of familiar Observatory faces, including former lecturers Evan Michelson and Mike Zohn as well as a variety of members of the wider Observatory community. There will also be special drinks, a DJed after party, surprise guests, and prizes and give-ways throughout the night. Members of the cast will also be available for questions and comments.

To find out more about the event, click here. You can see some clips and find out more about "Oddities" by clicking here. You can get directions to Observatory--which is next door to the Morbid Anatomy Library (more on that here)--by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here.

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Ooooooh... This is very exciting: An Edward Gorey Auction, featuring a broad variety of one-of-a-kind objects drawn from The Great Man's personal collection. A few of the 60 lots can be viewed above, full details on auction and objects can be found below:

The Edward Gorey SaleNew York, 9 December 2010, 11am

To be held on premises at 6 West 48th Street, New York, NY 10036View sale online or download a pdf.Live Bidding to be held on-site, absentee bids acccepted, free internet bidding via liveauctioneers.com and the-saleroom.com

Bloomsbury Auctions New York is very pleased to announce an auction devoted entirely to the author and illustrator Edward Gorey (1925-2000). Known for his whimsically macabre illustrations and intensely unique personal illustration style, this sale will feature an array of items owned by Gorey, as well as a large selection of his published books, original artwork, and personal jewelry.

The central focus of the sale will be 14 fur coats once owned, worn (and one also designed) by Edward Gorey from the 1950’s to early 1980’s. While gentlemen wearing fur coats were hallmarks of Gorey’s early pen and ink illustrations, Gorey himself had a change of heart in the 1980’s, putting the fur coats into storage – never to be worn again. Always well cared for, all coats have been in storage for well over 30 years. Mr. Gorey left the entirety of his estate to the care and welfare of animals. The proceeds from the sale of the coats will benefit the Edward Gorey Charitable Trust, whose sole mission is the care and welfare and animals, and the Edward Gorey House in Yarmouth Port, MA, which celebrates Gorey’s life and work through public exhibitions. Each coat is accompanied by a letter confirming the provenance as well as a custom label with an original Gorey design which has been sewn to the inside lining.

You can find out more, peruse the full 60 lots, and find out how to bid by clicking here.

All images drawn from the auction website. Object descriptions and price estimates, top to bottom:

Silver Bat Silver cloth with shoe-button eyes; stuffed with rice (190 x 360 mm). Bean bag toy designed and hand-stitched by the artist. Provenance: James Marshall. The versatile Gorey designed and personally made bean bag animals such as bats, frogs, rabbits and elephants. He stuffed the earliest ones with rice. He usually made them for friends like the children's book illustrator James Marshall; and only rarely were they sold to the general public. $1000 – $1500

Skull Necklace A skull neclace on a string, possible onyx, turquoise, or Abyssinian. Provenance: Edward Gorey to the Edward Gorey Charity Trust, Accompanied by a letter signed by Andreas Brown, Co-Trustee, confirming the ownership. A FINE EXAMPLE OF THE ECCENTRIC JEWELERY WORN BY EDWARD GOREY. $500 – $800

The Listing Attic New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, [1954]. Original pictorial boards, in the original unclipped dust jacket. Condition: edges lightly darkened, very faint old dampstain at top edge and to verso of jacket, cloth and jacket lightly rubbed at corners with a short tear to the upper panel of the jacket. FIRST EDITION OF GOREY'S SECOND BOOK. $150 – $200

The Vinegar Works New York, Simon & Schuster, 1963. 3 volumes, comprising: "The Gashlycrumb", "The West Wing" and "The Insect God." Square 4to. Original pictorial boards, housed in original slipcase. Condition: "The Gashlycrumb" somewhat shaken, spines darkened, light rubbing to corners; slipcase lightly chipped along extremities and soiled. FIRST EDITIONS; FIRST PRINTINGS. $250 – $300

People. I promise you that this is one you won't want to miss. On Tuesday December 21st--aka Winter Solstice--inimitable cult author and lecturer in the grand 19th C tradition Mark Dery will be gracing Observatory with his presence, swooping in to thrill us with his illustrated lecture "The Vast Santanic Conspiracy: Is St. Nick the Tool of a Plot too Monstrous to Mention?" Dery's presentation will be followed by a Krampus (See above)/Solstice-themed after party with music, sweets, specialty cocktails, idiosyncratic gifts, and more.

Full details follow. This is going to be good fun; VERY much hope to see you there!

The Vast Santanic Conspiracy: Is St. Nick the Tool of a Plot too Monstrous to Mention?An illustrated lecture with cult author and cultural critic Mark Dery, followed by a Krampus/Solstice-themed after party with music, specialty cocktails, and moreDate: Tuesday, December 21 (Winter Solstice)Time: 8:00 PMAdmission: $10Presented by Morbid Anatomy

Canceled, last year, by an act of Cthulhu–the Mother of All Blizzards, which dumped 20 inches of snow across the Northeast–Dery’s wickedly witty lecture, “The Vast Santanic Conspiracy: Is St. Nick the Tool of a Plot too Monstrous to Mention?,” is sure to inspire Christmas jeer.

Few Americans know that Santa descends from the mock king who held court at Saturnalia, the Roman festival celebrating the winter solstice. Or that he shares cultural DNA with the Lord of Misrule who presided over the yuletide Feast of Fools in the Middle Ages—lewd, blasphemous revels that gave vent to underclass hostility toward feudal lords and the all-powerful church.

In “The Vast Santanic Conspiracy: Is St. Nick the Tool of a Plot too Monstrous to Mention?,” Dery, a cultural critic and book author, takes a look at the Jolly Old Elf’s little-known role as poster boy for officially sanctioned eruptions of social chaos, as well as his current status as a flashpoint in “the Christmas Wars”—cultural battles between evangelicals, atheists, conservatives, and anti-consumerists over the “true” meaning of Christmas. Along the way, Dery considers New Age theories that Santa is a repressed memory of an ancient Celtic cult revolving around red-capped psychedelic mushrooms; Nazi attempts to re-imagine Christmas—a holiday consecrated to a Jewish baby, for Christ’s sake—as a pre-Christian invention of tree-worshipping German tribes, in some misty, Wagnerian past; and the suspicious similarities between Satan and Santa, connections that have fueled a cottage industry of conspiracy theories on the religious right.

You can find out more about this event on the Observatory website by clicking here. You can get directions to Observatory--which is next door to the Morbid Anatomy Library (more on that here)--by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here.

I just discovered a most amazing cultural artifact: Vincent Dumestre and Benjamin Lazar's 2008 resurrection of Jean-Baptiste Lully's Metamorphoses-inspired "Cadmus et Hermoine," the first French opera, which premiered on April 27, 1673 and has long since faded into obscurity.

This 21st Century revival of a baroque original is like a magnificent, life-sized toy theatre come to glorious and uncanny life, and functions as more like time-travel than performance, with its lavishly reproduced stage machinery, sets, costumes, makeup, mannered performance style, dance sequences, and completely candle-lit stage all painstakingly based on baroque originals. The music, too, is unforgettable; hauntingly lovely and slightly alien, yet, somehow, utterly familiar at the same time.

The complete production (Christmas gift, anyone?) is available in DVD form from Amazon.com, which describes it thusly:

The event of the year! The team led by conductor Vincent Dumestre and Benjamin Lazar has produced the very first French opera, composed in 1673 by Lully with a libretto by Quinault. With reconstructed sets and costumes, this entirely candle-lit production is a landmark in the rediscovery of baroque opera, providing a unique opportunity to discover a musical masterpiece that has fallen into oblivion over the last 3 centuries. Performers include Andre Morsch, Claire Lefilliatre, Arnaud Marzonati, Jean-Francois Lombard, Isabelle Druet, Arnaud Richard, and Camille Poul with the Orchestra, Choir, & Dancers of Le Poeme Harmonique.Vincent Dumestre directs this performance of Jean-Baptiste Lully's CADMUS ET HERMOINE. Composed in the 17th century, this libretto is a classic example of a musical tragedy and is known as the first French opera.

Click here to find out more, or purchase the DVD. Click here (highly recommended!) to view many more segments on the Oedipus at Versailles You Tube station. You can find out more about the history of the Cadmus et Hermoine opera here.

The contest will be judged by our panel of savage taxidermy enthusiasts, including Robert Marbury of the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists; Dorian Devins, co-founder and curator of the Secret Science Club; and beast mistress Melissa Milgrom, author of Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy.

JUST ADDED: Purveyor of scientific wonders and star of the inimitable new show Oddities on the Discovery Channel, Mike Zohn joins the judging panel and presents an illustrated lecture on (yes!) taxidermy.

Plus!--Groove to wildlife-inspired tunes and video--Imbibe ferocious specialty drinks! (They’ll bring out the animal in you.)--Special guests and surprises!

Contest Background: The Carnivorous Nights Taxidermy Contest is hosted by the Secret Science Club, an organization dedicated to exploring scientific discoveries and potent potables. The contest was started in 2005 by two of the Secret Science Club’s co-founders to shamelessly promote their taxidermy-inspired book Carnivorous Nights: On the Trail of the Tasmanian Tiger. The event has since taken on a life of its own, with first-year winners Andrew Templar and Jim Carden—co-owners of the Bell House—now providing a permanent home for this beastly annual smack-down. Special thanks to Robert Marbury of the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists, the Rump Ape, and Poe the Crow.

More here. The image you see above is the Hamlet Mouse by Mouse Angel/Jeanie M. You can purchase your very own Hamlet Mouse--or Angel, or Punker Rocker, or Mousealope, or Pope--at The Morbid Anatomy Library; click here or email me here for details.

“The form of the horse is taken from an eighteenth or nineteenth-century volume of anatomical illustrations, but is shown, ironically, as a monument to power and glory. The form of the horse, being made as flat fretwork is a shadow rather that a full three-dimensional body, emphasising Ben-David’s concept of the ultimate immaterial nature of grandeur.”

Sunday, December 5, 2010

In 1906 The Journal of the English Folk Song Society published a piece on the old English ballad “Death and the Lady.” Some enterprising female entertainer encountered the article and realized the story might be used as a great vaudeville piece about the evils of card play and alcohol. Touring performers were always searching for material that would play well in the sticks. The city folks would enjoy the Grand Guignol staging, the traditional song, and the vocal technique. Here Joseph Hall, the Brooklyn born photographer who had made a career on baseball pictures and theatrical production stills, captured the sequence of the action, providing a peculiarly detailed & rare view of the progress of a single vaudeville performance.

Click on images to see larger, richer versions; you can see the complete series of photos on the Historical Ziegfeld website by clicking here.